Poet and fiction writer Deno Trakas has a hundred-year connection to Spartanburg. His family settled in the area in 1900, and his paternal grandfather was a founder of Spartanburg's Greek community. He has supported and been supported by Hub City since its first project, and he's one of four authors featured in Hub City's New Southern Harmonies, a collection of short stories that also includes work by Rosa Shand, Scott Gould, and George Singleton. This 1998 title received the Independent Publisher's Award for Best Fiction Collection.

Hub City will publish Deno's full-length memoir/history about Upstate South Carolina's Greek community in fall 2008.

Trakas has published fiction and poetry in more than two dozen journals, including The Denver Quarterly, The Oxford American, and The Louisville Review. He is the author of two chapbooks, The Shuffle of Wings and Human & Puny. His novel, After Paris, was a finalist for the James Jones Award for a First Novel, and his play "The Old Man and the Tree" won Harvey Jeffrey's Original One-Act Play Contest at Lander University.

Deno has a Masters degree from the University of Tulsa and a doctorate from the University of South Carolina. Currently, he is a professor of English at Wofford College, where he also serves as director of the writing center and coordinator of the creative writing program.